Crafting successful public health measures depends on the ability of top scientists to gather data and report their findings unrestricted to policymakers.
State of play: But concern has spiked among health experts and physicians over what they see as an assault on key science protections, particularly during a raging pandemic. And a move last week by President Trump, via an executive order, is triggering even more worries.
What’s happening: If implemented, the order creates a “Schedule F” class of federal employees who are policymakers from certain agencies who would no longer have protection against being easily fired— and would likely include some veteran civil service scientists who offer key guidance to Congress and the White House.
“This much-needed reform will increase accountability in essential policymaking positions within the government,” OMB director Russ Vought tells Axios in a statement.
What they’re saying: Several medical associations, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America, strongly condemned the action, and Democrats on the House oversight panel demanded the administration “immediately cease” implementation.
“If you take how it’s written at face value, it has the potential to turn every government employee into a political appointee, who can be hired and fired at the whim of a political appointee or even the president,” says University of Colorado Boulder’s Roger Pielke Jr.
Protections for members of civil service allow them to argue for evidence-based decision-making and enable them to provide the best advice, says CRDF Global’s Julie Fischer, adding that “federal decision-makers really need access to that expertise — quickly and ideally in house.”
Between the lines: Politics plays some role in science, via funding, policymaking and national security issues.
The public health system is a mix of agency leaders who are political appointees, like HHS Secretary Alex Azar, and career civil servants not dependent on the president’s approval, like NIAID director Anthony Fauci.
“Public health is inherently political because it has to do with controlling the way human beings move around,” says University of Pennsylvania’s Jonathan Moreno.
Yes, but: The norm is to have a robust discussion — and what has been happening under the Trump administration is not the norm, some say.
“Schedule F is just remarkable,” Pielke says. “It’s not like political appointees editing a report, [who are] working within the system to kind of subvert the system. This is an effort to completely redefine the system.”
The Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Stephen Morrison says that the administration has been defying normative practices, including statements denigrating scientists, the CDC and FDA.
The big picture: Public trust in scientists,which tends to be high, is taking a hit, not only due to messaging from the administration but also from public confusion over changes in guidance, which vacillated over masks and other suggestions.
Public health institutions “need to have the trust of the American people. In order to have the trust of the American people, they can’t have their autonomy and their credibility compromised, and they have to have a voice,” Morrison says.
“If you deny CDC the ability to have briefings for the public, and you take away control over authoring their guidance, and you attack them and discredit them so public perceptions of them are negative, you are taking them out of the game and leaving the stage completely open for falsehoods,” he adds.
“All scientists don’t agree on all the evidence, every time. But what we do agree on is that there’s a process. We look at what we know, we decide what we can clearly recommend based on what we know, sometimes when we learn more, we change our recommendations, and that’s the scientific process,” Fischer says.
What’s next: The scientific community is going to need to be proactive on rebuilding public trust in how the scientific process works and being clear when guidance changes and why it has changed, Fischer says.
The nationwide surge in coronavirus cases is forcing many school districts to pull back from in-person instruction, Axios’ Marisa Fernandez reports.
Why it matters:Remote learning is a burden on parents, teachers and students. But the wave of new infections, and its strain on some hospitals’ capacity, makes all forms of reopening harder to justify.
Where it stands:Over 60% of U.S. public school students will be attending schools with in-person options, up 20% from Labor Day, Education Dive reports. But some of those districts are pulling back.
Spikes in COVID-19 cases are forcing two Salt Lake County high schools to close their doors and switch to online-only instruction — in a district where half the high schools were already closed, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
Both Boston and Chicago’s public school districts shut down in-person learning as health officials investigate outbreaks in nearby suburbs.
Nineteen Minnesota counties are on the verge of closing their K-12 schools for the foreseeable future because of rising coronavirus cases, the Pioneer Press reports.
The other side: Early evidence suggests that in-person school reopenings have been safe — and fears that they’d become hotspots haven’t come to pass.
Some experts say local governments trying to contain their outbreaks should close bars and restaurants first, shutting down schools only as a last resort.
That’s the approach Germany took this week. The government will allow schools and day cares to remain open while paying bars and restaurants to shut down, in an effort to curb the rise in cases.
The bottom line:School districts are in a tough spot as they try to juggle the safety of their staff, frustrated parents and the needs of their students.
At least 1,004 new coronavirus deaths and 90,728 new cases were reported in the United States on Oct. 29. Over the past week, there have been an average of 77,865 cases per day, an increase of 42 percent from the average two weeks earlier.
As of Friday afternoon, more than 9,078,400 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 229,200 have died, according to a New York Times database.
Case numbers in the United States have reached alarming new records in recent days as outbreaks continue to grow across the country. Though rural counties and small metro areas continue to see some of the worst growth, infections are also rising rapidly around major cities like Chicago and Milwaukee.
The national trajectory is worsening rapidly. Wisconsin has opened a field hospital. North Dakota, which not long ago had relatively few cases, has grown so overwhelmed that it has now ended most contact tracing. Cases have reached record levels recently in more than 20 states, including Illinois, Tennessee, New Mexico, Nebraska and Utah.
A complete financial recovery for many organizations is still far away, findings from Kaufman Hall indicate.
For the past three years, Kaufman Hall has released annual healthcare performance reports illustrating how hospitals and health systems are managing, both financially and operationally.
This year, however, with the pandemic altering the industry so broadly, the report took a different approach: to see how COVID-19 impacted hospitals and health systems across the country. The report’s findings deal with finances, patient volumes and recovery.
The report includes survey answers from respondents almost entirely (96%) from hospitals or health systems. Most of the respondents were in executive leadership (55%) or financial roles (39%). Survey responses were collected in August 2020.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
Findings from the report indicate that a complete financial recovery for many organizations is still far away. Almost three-quarters of the respondents said they were either moderately or extremely concerned about their organization’s financial viability in 2021 without an effective vaccine or treatment.
Looking back on the operating margins for the second quarter of the year, 33% of respondents saw their operating margins decline by more than 100% compared to the same time last year.
Revenue cycles have taken a hit from COVID-19, according to the report. Survey respondents said they are seeing increases in bad debt and uncompensated care (48%), higher percentages of uninsured or self-pay patients (44%), more Medicaid patients (41%) and lower percentages of commercially insured patients (38%).
Organizations also noted that increases in expenses, especially for personal protective equipment and labor, have impacted their finances. For 22% of respondents, their expenses increased by more than 50%.
IMPACT ON PATIENT VOLUMES
Although volumes did increase over the summer, most of the improvement occurred in areas where it is difficult to delay care, such as oncology and cardiology. For example, oncology was the only field where more than half of respondents (60%) saw their volumes recover to more than 90% of pre-pandemic levels.
More than 40% of respondents said that cardiology volumes are operating at more than 90% of pre-pandemic levels. Only 37% of respondents can say the same for orthopedics, neurology and radiology, and 22% for pediatrics.
Emergency department usage is also down as a result of the pandemic, according to the report. The respondents expect that this trend will persist beyond COVID-19 and that systems may need to reshape their business model to account for a drop in emergency department utilization.
Most respondents also said they expect to see overall volumes remain low through the summer of 2021, with some planning for suppressed volumes for the next three years.
RECOVERY MEASURES
Hospitals and health systems have taken a number of approaches to reduce costs and mitigate future revenue declines. The most common practices implemented are supply reprocessing, furloughs and salary reductions, according to the report.
Executives are considering other tactics such as restructuring physician contracts, making permanent labor reductions, changing employee health plan benefits and retirement plan contributions, or merging with another health system as additional cost reduction measures.
THE LARGER TREND
Kaufman Hall has been documenting the impact of COVID-19 hospitals since the beginning of the pandemic. In its July report, hospital operating margins were down 96% since the start of the year.
As a result of these losses, hospitals, health systems and advocacy groups continue to push Congress to deliver another round of relief measures.
Earlier this month, the House passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus bill called the HEROES Act, 2.0. The bill has yet to pass the Senate, and the chances of that happening are slim, with Republicans in favor of a much smaller, $500 billion package. Nothing is expected to happen prior to the presidential election.
Less than three months from now, either Donald Trump will begin his second term as President, or Joe Biden will begin his first. What the U.S. healthcare system on that date and moving forward could be starkly different depending on who is sworn in.
The policy differences between the two men are essentially on opposite poles. If fully enacted, Trump’s policies could potentially cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their healthcare coverage.Biden’s policies would likely provide healthcare access to tens of millions more Americans compared to today.
In November, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case called California v. Texas. It stems from the 2017 tax bill that zeroed out the penalty individuals paid if they did not obtain health insurance. The argument put forth by the 20 Republican state attorney generals in that case is if the individual mandate no longer has taxing power, the entire law should be declared unconstitutional based upon a lack of severability of the entire law.
Many legal scholars have noted that this case is premised on a shaky argument. But with a 6-3 majority of conservative justices now on the high court, many bets are off as to the ACA’s survival. And President Trump just said in an interview with “60 Minutes” he fervently hoped the ACA is eliminated. He put forth no alternatives to the ACA in that interview.
Should the ACA be declared unconstitutional, health insurance for some 23 million people would be imperiled. That includes some 12 million Americans who are eligible for Medicaid under the ACA’s expanded income guidelines, and another 11 million who purchase insurance on the state and federal health insurance exchanges – roughly 85% of whom receive premium subsidies that make it more affordable. Moreover, another 14 million Americans who are estimated to have lost their employer-based health plans during the COVID-19 pandemic may not have another place to turn for coverage.
Before the ACA case, the Trump administration also promoted so-called “off-exchange” health plans, and health sharing ministries. The first is often a form of short-term health insurance, the second operates as a cooperative serving those of the same religious stripe. Both offer health coverage that is potentially cheaper that what is offered on the exchanges, but both also tend to cap it at low dollar levels. Many also bar applicants for a variety of claims, such as for maternity or cancer care, or if they have pre-existing medical conditions – practices prohibited for ACA plans.
Should Trump be re-elected and the ACA survives constitutional muster, expect to see many states apply for more waivers from that law. Georgia just received approval to modestly expand Medicaid eligibility, primarily for those poor already working 80 hours or more a month. The state is also on the cusp of being able to opt out of the healthcare.gov exchange entirely and have consumers work directly with insurance brokers to purchase coverage. However, there is nothing in the pending waiver to prevent those brokers from offering stripped-down coverage without the ACA protections that the Trump administration is already promoting. There could also be more block grants to states for their Medicaid budgets, which most experts have concluded would reduce the number of enrollees in that program.
If Biden is elected and both incoming houses of Congress are also Democratic, the entire Supreme Court case can be mooted simply by reattaching a financial penalty to the individual mandate. That hasn’t been mentioned at all during the campaign, presumably because Biden does not want to discuss what would essentially be a promise to raise taxes. But it is the most direct way to skirt the risk of an adverse Supreme Court decision.
Biden’s campaign has also put forth numerous proposals to enlarge the ACA and the Medicare program. They include expanded premium subsidies for individuals and families to purchase coverage, and a public health plan option – which would allow those who live in the states that have yet to expand Medicaid to obtain coverage. Biden has also proposed a buy-in to Medicare at age 60.
The estimates are that an expanded ACA and other Biden plans could net another 20 to 25 million Americans healthcare coverage. That would leave fewer than 10 million – 2% to 3% of the population – without access to coverage. It would probably be as close to universal healthcare as the United States could get given its current political realities.
The two different approaches will either lead to a country where virtually everyone has access to healthcare coverage and services, or one where 50 million or more people could potentially be uninsured. It’s a shift that could impact a minimum of 45 million people – and that’s not even counting those who lost their coverage during the current public health crisis.
Elections have consequences. Less than three months from now, this one will determine whether the U.S. healthcare system will take one consequential path over another.
HENRY KOTULA 